IN CONVERSATION SERIES LINEUP

Tony Kushner with Frank Rich | Billy Collins | Tracy K. Smith | David Grann

HEADLINERS SERIES LINEUP

Michael Feinstein in Because of You | RENT In Concert | A Broadway 50th Anniversary! | Jeremy Jordan

New subscriptions available at scfta.org

COSTA MESA, CA | Segerstrom Center for the Arts is thrilled to announce an extraordinary lineup of performances as part of our 2024/25 Headliners and In Conversation Series. With a diverse array of world-class artists and captivating productions, the Center continues its tradition of excellence in presenting unforgettable cultural experiences for audiences of all ages.

Renowned for its insightful discussions and captivating dialogue, the Center’s 2024-25 In Conversation series promises to engage and inspire audiences with thought-provoking conversations featuring some of the most prominent voices in literature, journalism and the arts. The series will kick off with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, known for his groundbreaking work in theatre, including his esteemed play "Angels in America." The series will also feature a fun and fascinating discussion with Billy Collins, who the New York Times calls “the most popular poet in America.”

Tracy K. Smith, another Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate, will join us to discuss her evocative poetry that delves into themes of identity, history, and the human experience. Rounding out this exceptional lineup is David Grann whose bestselling books have become the inspiration for several Hollywood movies, including last year’s Oscar-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Center’s 2024-2025 headliner series features an array of sensational performances celebrating music, Broadway, and legendary artists. In a one-night-only concert event, Michael Feinstein in Because of You pays tribute to Tony Bennett’s illustrious career, including hits such as "Because of You" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco” accompanied by the Carnegie Hall Big Band. Measure your life in love with RENT In Concert, an upcoming 30th anniversary celebration, featuring beloved songs from Jonathan Larson's groundbreaking rock opera performed by a stellar cast.

In A Broadway 50th Anniversary! What I did for Love…and All That Jazz, we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of both A Chorus Line and Chicago featuring a cast of Broadway luminaries. Back by popular demand, Jeremy Jordan returns to the Center after selling out multiple dates last season. Jeremy is back to thrill audiences with his incredible voice and charm.

Subscriptions for the 2024/25 In Conversation and Headliners series are available now. Tickets for individual performances will go on sale at a later date. Visit the Center’s website www.SCFTA.org for more information. For Group sales call (714) 755-0236.

2024-25 IN CONVERSATION SERIES LINEUP

Tony Kushner with Frank Rich | September 30, 2024

Tony Kushner has been called America’s most important living playwright and one of the single greatest wordsmiths of all time. On stage, Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, which won both the Pulitzer Prime for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.  The play was later adapted into an HBO miniseries by Mike Nichols, for which Kushner earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing.  His other plays include Homebody/Kabul, Slavs!, A Bright Room Called Day  as well as the musical Caroline, or Change and the opera A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck.  

Since the start of the 21^st Century, Kusher has moved to the silver screen, becoming a frequent collaborator with the great director Stephen Spielberg. Together they have worked on films including Lincoln, Munich, West Side Story and most recently, the Fablemans, garnering Kushner 4 Academy Award nominations. 

Sharing the stage with Kushner in what is sure to be a riveting and thought-provoking discussion is the illustrious drama critic, writer, bestselling author and TV producer Frank Rich.  Known for exploring the news through the lens of pop culture, Rich has won Emmy Awards and Peabody Awards for producing Veep and Succession on HBO.     

Billy Collins | January 13, 2025

Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. Not since Robert Frost has anyone managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal; his level of fame is almost unprecedented in the world of contemporary poetry. His last three collections of poems have broken sales records. His readings are usually standing room only, and his audience – enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio – includes people of all backgrounds and age groups.

The poems themselves best explain this phenomenon. Billy Collins makes uncommonly accessible verse – characterized by plain language, gentle humor, and a sincere appreciation for the mundane. He is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender, or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. No wonder Collins sees his poetry as “a form of travel writing” and considers humor “a door into the serious.” It is a door that many thousands of readers have opened with amazement and delight.

Along with the twelve best-selling volumes of his poetry, Collins also served two terms as the US Poet Laureate, from 2001-2003. He has been awarded almost every poetry prize under the sun, including being selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Collins’ highly anticipated new poetry collection, Water, Water, debuting in November 2024, is a wondrous collection of poems focused on the joys and mysteries of everyday life! 

Tracy K. Smith | March 3, 2025

Since first being published in 2003, Tracy K. Smith has been a writer to watch.  Smith’s collection of poetry, Life on Mars, won the Pulitzer Prize, and her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.   

Regardless of what style she chooses to pursue, her language is forceful, intelligent, and musical.  Throughout her career, she has used her craft to frankly ask the questions that have intrigued her the most about our world.

Her poems, which delight in humanity’s sprawling yet thrilling range of emotions—love and grief, desire and rage, joy, and hope—often find the political within the personal, beckoning readers to engage with their own curiosities about the narratives they’ve been told about racism, power, and justice.

Like the best poets, Smith shows her readers that they share a common foundation and questions how that foundation was laid.   Dwelling in the threshold between history and the present, Smith has been called our “country’s poetic caretaker,” calling for both collective reckoning and collective empathy.  

A passionate educator and advocate, Smith served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States, during which time she traveled across America, hosting poetry readings and conversations in rural communities. She currently is a professor of English and of African and African American studies at Harvard. 

David Grann | April 16, 2025

David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.  Known as “the man Hollywood can’t stop reading,” Grann breathes new life into historical events, gifting his readers factually accurate tales that read like a thrilling work of fiction and that are ripe for adaptation.

Grann is the author of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, which documented one of the most sinister crimes and racial injustices in American history. Described in the New York Times as a “riveting” work that will “sear your soul,” it was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for best true crime book. A #1 New York Times bestseller (with over 100 weeks on the list, and counting), it was named one of the best books of the year by the Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and selected by Amazon as the single best book of the year. The book was adapted into a 2023 motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, earning 10 Academy Award nominations.

Grann’s first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was #1 New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, it was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and other publications. Grann’s book was adapted into a critically acclaimed film directed by James Gray and starring Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, and Tom Holland.

His newest novel, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, tells the true saga of a company of British naval officers and crew that became stranded on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia and descended into murderous anarchy. With the twists and turns of a thriller, the book explores the nature of survival, duty, and leadership, and it examines how both people and nations tell—and manipulate—history.  The Wager debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has remained on the list ever since, often in the top spot.   Rights to The Wager were acquired prior to the book’s release, with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio reuniting as director and leading man.

24-25 HEADLINERS SERIES LINEUP

Michael Feinstein in Because of You | October 5, 2024

In this one-night-only concert event, Michael Feinstein pays heartfelt tribute to the legendary Tony Bennett, bringing his iconic songs to life in a symphony of sound, accompanied by the Carnegie Hall Big Band.

An artist with a rich history at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Tony Bennett graced our stages 8 times throughout his illustrious career.  

The performance will feature hits such as "Because of You,” "Rags to Riches," "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," "The Best is Yet To Come," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Stranger in Paradise" and many more. Feinstein's dynamic interpretations, coupled with the grandeur of the big band, will create an unforgettable night that honors the legacy of Tony Bennett in all its glory.

Michael Feinstein's close friendship with Tony Bennett adds a profound layer to this tribute, as their camaraderie brings authenticity and depth to each note performed. Not only does Feinstein's masterful interpretation of Bennett's timeless repertoire pay homage to an era of classic songwriting, but it also preserves the rich cultural heritage that these songs represent.

Join us as Michael Feinstein pays a heartfelt, multimedia tribute to his friend and beloved entertainer Tony Bennett!

RENT In Concert | March 15, 2025

Measure your life in love with the iconic music of RENT! Segerstrom Center is ecstatic to present this new staged, symphonic experience of the Tony Award®–winning Best Musical. Experience “Seasons of Love,” “Light My Candle,” “La Vie Bohème,” “Out Tonight,” “Take Me or Leave Me,” and all of your favorite moments accompanied by the soaring sounds of a live symphony and stellar cast.

Jonathan Larson’s rock opera RENT is one of the most important musicals of this century, credited with introducing musical theater to a whole new audience and literally changing the face of casting on Broadway.   RENT enjoyed both enormous critical and commercial success – winning not only the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical, but also running for over 12 years, making it one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history.   

Experience the iconic music of RENT like never before! 

A Broadway 50th Anniversary! | April 18, 2025

In the summer of 1975 in New York City, two musicals opened on Broadway. Each would become American masterpieces and forever earn a place in popular culture:  A Chorus Line and Chicago.  

With music by Marvin Hamlisch, A Chorus Line became an unprecedented box office and critical hit!  The musical won 9 Tony Awards and became the longest running production in Broadway history.   

Just a few blocks away, featuring an opening night cast of Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon, and Jerry Orbach, Chicago debuted with music by Kander & Ebb.  Initially, Chicago lived in the shadow of A Chorus Line and it wasn’t until the 1996 revival that the musical truly took off.  That revival won 6 Tony Awards and it continues to play to this day on Broadway, where it now owns the record for the longest running American musical in history.       

These contributions alone would be enough to earn the songwriter’s hallowed status, but thankfully these men gave us so much more!   

Marvin Hamlisch is not only a member of the illustrious EGOT club (the winner of Emmy, GRAMMY, Oscar and Tony Awards), but he is in rare air as a Pulitzer Prize winner as well. Hamlisch started as a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand, which led to a long history together, including their iconic song “The Way We Were.” Other career highlights include the James Bond theme “Nobody Does it Better” and theme song from The Sting, “The Entertainer.”

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are Broadway legends, of course.  They had already written Cabaret before they struck gold again with Chicago!  And the two continued to create hits throughout their storied career, including Kiss of the Spider Woman, Steel Pier, the Scottsboro Boys, and The Visit!  As amazing as this resume is, their most famous song wasn’t originally for the stage, but rather “New York, New York” which became a signature song for Frank Sinatra, Liza Minelli, and more!              

For the 50th anniversary of these seminal musicals, we have gathered a cast of Broadway luminaries to celebrate and perform the wonderful music of Marvin Hamlisch and Kander & Ebb!    

Jeremy Jordan | June 28, 2025

We could not be more thrilled to welcome back Jeremy Jordan to Segerstrom Center for the Arts! 

Last season, Jeremy made his Cabaret Series debut, performing to sell-out crowds, thrilling audiences with his incredible voice, dancing skills and larger-than-life charm.  Now, after his starring role as Jay Gatsby in the Great Gatsby on Broadway (for which he won the Favorite Leading Actor in a Musical at the Broadway.com Audience Choice Awards), we welcome him back again! 

In his highly anticipated return, Jeremy will be performing in the acoustic splendor of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall!  Whether bringing down the house with songs from his own storied career on stage and screen (Newsies, SMASH, The Last Five Years, The Great Gatsby) or putting his unique spin on the music of others - from both pop culture and the Great White Way; no one does it quite like Jeremy Jordan!        

Seize the day and get your tickets for this sure-to-sell-out appearance by the one and only Jeremy Jordan!

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